American Rhetoric: Movie Speech

"Flight" (2012)

Mr. Whip Whitaker Addresses Fellow Inmates on Past Sins

That was it. I was finished, I was done.¹

It was as if I had reached my lifelong limit of lies.²

I could not tell one more lie.

And maybe I'm a sucker -- because if I had told just one more lie, I could have walked away from all that mess, and kept my wings, kept my false sense of pride. And more importantly, I could have avoided being locked up in here with all you nice folks for the last months.

But I'm here. And I'll be here for at least the next four or five years -- and that's fair.

I betrayed the public trust. I did. That's how the judge explained it to me: I had "betrayed the public trust." The FAA [Federal Aviation Administration], they took away my pilot's license -- and that's fair.

My chances of ever flying again are slim to none -- and I accept that.

I've had a lot of time to think about it, all of it.

Doing some writing. I wrote letters to each of the families that had lost loved ones and some of them were able to hear my apology. Some of them never will. And I also apologized to all the people that tried to help me along the way but I couldn't or wouldn't listen, people like my wife -- my ex-wife -- and...my son.

And again, like I said, you know, some of them will never forgive me.

Some of them will.

But at least I'm sober. And I thank God for that. I'm grateful for that.

And this is gonna sound real stupid coming from a man who's locked up in
prison, but for the first time in my life: I'm free.

¹ Scesis Onomaton

² Alliteration